Is Julia Gillard the Peter Reith of the Labor Party?

John Passant

Julia Gillard is the Peter Reith of the Labor Party. Of course she's more nuanced, more articulate and has more influence over the trade union movement than Reith. That makes her more dangerous to workers and more useful to the bosses.

Her value to capital and closeness to the trade union and Labor Party bureaucrats explains why, if Labor wins the federal election this year, she will replace Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister in 2011 or early 2012.

Her record on unions is abysmal. Her workplace goons, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, intimidates building workers from conducting legitimate trade union activity under threat of criminal prosecutions.

Ark Tribe faces six months' jail on Gillard's watch for the heinous crime of attending a union safety stop-work meeting and not telling the ABCC what was discussed. His union, the CFMEU, to its credit is threatening strikes if he is jailed.

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Gillard has argued that the ABCC is there to stop illegal activity in the building industry. This is rubbish. How many bosses has the ABCC prosecuted? How many has it dragged before the courts over deaths on site or poor safety?

The ABCC is about stopping workers defending their wages and conditions. Gillard supports an employer appeal against a Fair Work Australia ruling giving unions limited workplace access. As the CFMEU points out, the stronger the union presence the safer the workplace.

Her government does not support a catch up for low-paid workers who received no pay increase during the global financial crisis. Gillard has refused to nominate a figure for the pay increase. She won't even support the ACTU and its claim for a miserly $27 a week.

Gillard's award restructuring is an open invitation to bosses to cut wages and conditions. She has done a bit of posturing against the bosses on this but nothing concrete. It's nudge-nudge wink-wink stuff.

Unions in the Pilbara region of Western Australia earlier this year held "illegal" strikes over accommodation changes. Now the company, Woodside, is suing the union and its assistant secretary for up to $22,000. Gillard flew to Western Australia to mix with the big wigs of mining capital and reassure them that the Government supported their attacks on workers.

Gillard is not only the smiling attack dog in charge of industrial relations. She is also destroying education in Australia through her My School wesbite.

My School is the Government's education site where you can see how your school is "performing" compared with others.

This comparison is based on results from compulsory tests over various school years. The results are made public and parents and educators can supposedly see how their school is going and make life decisions accordingly.

One of the arguments is that My School will highlight problems that schools can address. Of course, without a massive injection of funding, and with inadequate teacher pay and numbers, those problems will remain and enrolments and government expenditure will follow the (mainly private) money.

The teachers' union is meeting this week to debate banning teacher supervision of the tests. If this were carried it would destroy the validity of My School.

Gillard's response has been to threaten to organise parents to scab on teachers and supervise the tests.

So untrained, inexperienced people are going to replace teachers. Will they be paid? Will they be rigorously assessed as teachers are to judge their suitability for working with children?

Peter Reith trained his scabs. In Dubai. He protected them with armed thugs and dogs. The wharfies stopped the scabs with strong picket lines. (They won in the courts but lost in the ports. That is another story and a lesson the teachers must learn. Rely on your industrial strength, not the courts.)

If Gillard wants to send in scabs, the Teachers' Union should appeal to parents not to scab. it should work with parent organisations to point out the real issues at stake.

And finally it should, just as the Maritime Union did so successfully in defeating the first Peter Reith, set up strong picket lines at schools to stop any scabs and call on other unions and the community to join them in stopping a few misguided parents.

This article first appeared in En Passant with John Passant, a freelance author who regularly contributes to the National Times.

55 comments

You forgot to mention the extension of income management to single people and all students receiving Youth Allowance.

This means a bunch of failed lawyers in Canberra will be deciding how thousands of people - who have never done anything wrong - will be told what they can and can't spend their money on.

Commenter

john

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 12:50PM

Gillard is right. I can't see a reason for guaranteeing an increase post GFC. I'm not under the award wage and I haven't had a salary increase in a couple of years. Why should unions get their increase guaranteed?

Commenter

SC

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 12:54PM

Confession - I used to be a member of a union executive. I am no longer a member of a union, although still in the same job.

What 19th century Marxist rock did the author crawl out from under? Is he perhaps trying to out-Akerman the loonies on the right? (or out-Bolt, out-Devine, etc).

When someone starts presenting a former trade union lawyer as anathema to the union movement you just know that someone is having a little "the world isn't perfect and I want it to be so it should be" sook.

This was quite laughable, so thanks for the lunchtime amusement. I am sure Peter Reith would be killing himself laughing too.

Commenter

Stormy

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 12:56PM

I agree with Passant. Gillard is a Labor rat!

Commenter

Lesm

Location

Balmain

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 12:59PM

Hard to argue with any of this.

Commenter

Danny Lan

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 1:00PM

I can't believe vitriolic rubbish such as this can find its way onto the pages of The Age.

Commenter

Spinner

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 1:03PM

I certianly hope Gillard is the Peter Reith of :Labor. He got things done and achieved progress in the ports, industrial relations, defence and in general. He has a fine record to be proud of. Not so the slimy unionist he defeated.

Gillard should stick to her guns and defeat the teachers union on My School. Why? Because that's what the parents want. She should hold the fort on militant mining and construction unions. Why? Because that's what this nation needs.

But we should be wary of her becoming PM. I'm not sure she's all good and no old lefty Labor.

Commenter

Captain Col

Location

Warnbro WA

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 1:04PM

Unfortunately it seems to me that unions failed to seize a fantastic opportunity to make themeselves relevant under the previous Government workchoices legislation. The above article just serves to highlights this. Pulbic performance data is one of the best ways to improve the performance of the best and the worst of schools (and other areas of public life). The public needs to know where the problems lie so they can ask 'why is this school not performing' and pressure those in power to make changes. The thought that somehow by collecting this data and storing it in the deepest darkest corners of the Department of Education will improve life for anyone is so amusing to be truely sad. Or event worst will be examined only by public servants (beholden to defend their minister) and unions (beholden to defend their members), resulting in a reinforcement of the status-quo.

Another argument that must be stated; if tax-payers are funding schools then surely they have the right to know how effectively is their money being spent (an argument I would extend to other areas)? The myschool website is surely a beginning, and I look forward to its expansion in both schools and into other areas (myhospital a start?)

Commenter

Mick

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 1:05PM

May be Passant needs to be reminded that Gillard has been elected to Parlament to represent the Australian people in total and not the few remaining union members, I look forward to her leading this country.

Commenter

Henry

Date and time

April 12, 2010, 1:33PM

'Is Julia Gillard the Peter Reith of the Labor Party?" Certainly not-Peter Reith left a wonderful legacy of reform and efficiency on Australian Waterfront Julia Gillard's legacy will be that she has presided over the biggest waste of borrowed money in the history of the federal Government. The so called BER scheme is already a mammoth scandal that will eclipse the discredited ceiling insulation scheme.